


silly little parasite

by thedevilbites



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Dichotomy of good vs evil because who doesn't love a good ol' dichotomy, F/M, Manipulation, Merlin has his magic/voodoo emotion-controlling powers, The skull is an erogenous zone loll who knew, Unresolved Sexual Tension, spy!Midwife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:53:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26592457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilbites/pseuds/thedevilbites
Summary: Only his hands twitch, perched expectantly on the edge of his staff like sickly, anemic crows.
Relationships: Merlin/The Midwife
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	silly little parasite

**Author's Note:**

> the spy!Midwife fic you didn't know you were looking for
> 
> welcome, my friends, to the jungle

Her voice carries through the trees when she speaks the words, stretching eerily in the quiet. 

“You’re something evil, aren’t you?” 

Merlin continues to stare at her, mute. The silence between them is charged. Agitated. Like rubbing a finger over an open flesh wound, the bubbling sting that creeps under the skin afterwards like a leech. 

It’s potently, undeniably _uncomfortable._

The Midwife tries not to shudder. She doesn't like to accuse people. It makes her feel unclean.

Her eyes flicker down to her dress, the bunched layers of her skirts stark against the ground, fanning around her like a clumsy halo. The hem is stained, prickly with age and dirt and the rusty remnants of fine wine. Her clothes do not have the same sentiment for cleanliness as her mind does.

“Well?” The Midwife presses, rising onto her haunches, fingers still clawed into the dirt. It’s coarse. The little rocks dig into the palms of her hands. 

She forces herself to make eye-contact. Beguiling the ill was something of speciality to her, once.

Merlin’s eyes are green and glazed over and evenly reflective, like stained glass. They narrow onto the sloping sand dunes of her cheekbones, the wire-thin arc of her eyebrows raised high on her head. She schools her expression.

Merlin tracks the movement, and his mouth falls open lazily. _Languidly._ There’s a certain _wrongness_ that permeates the corners of his mouth, the way his lips quiver into a wide grin. It’s a quick, fervent movement. The weak sunlight springboards off his teeth, casts his face in pale greens and yellows, like an aging bruise.

He pitches forward abruptly, and she startles.

“Must you always be so abrasive?” He murmurs, almost to himself, swaying closer in time with her fervent exhale, voice soft and sullen and aging. 

The Midwife frowns, rises even higher to meet him. “Must you always speak in riddles?”

Merlin stumbles, sways even closer. There’s sweat building in the hollows of his collarbones.

He peers down at her quizzically. “Not always,” he shakes his head, silhouette framed by the mottled greenery around them. 

“Sometimes, then.”

“Sometimes.”

“When you’ve got something to hide?” 

“You don’t stop, do you?” Merlin snorts, the sound entirely unbecoming. It breaks the tension, shakes her a little. 

“I’ve been called persistent in the past.”

“Ah. Persistent, you say?”

“Among other things.” The Midwife says evasively, eyes falling to her hands. She tracks the hem of her dress again, winds a stray thread around her index finger. 

“All good things then, I take it?”

“Of course.”

“Enlighten me.”

The Midwife clicks her tongue at him. “You don’t stop, do you?” She parrots back, tongue-in-cheek.

“I’m afraid not.”

The dying rays of the sun catch her face, blinding her momentarily. “What a shocker,” she mumbles, squinting up at the sky. A staircase of branches spiral up in her periphery.

She glances back at him when Merlin falls silent. He cocks his head at her in lieu of a response, and she suddenly feels exposed. _Frayed._ The height difference between them is horribly palpable. She has to tip her head way back to meet his eyes. Her neck is sore. 

Merlin leans down towards her, and his lips curl up sharply. The Midwife pictures a snake rearing its head. She fists the dirt impulsively.

“I could go on for _hours,_ ” Merlin enunciates, but his voice is dead and flat and empty. She recoils as though he’s slapped her, but he doesn’t react. Only his hands twitch, perched expectantly on the edge of his staff like pale, anemic crows. 

The Midwife struggles to her feet abruptly, braces herself against the redwood behind her, stubbornly ignoring the _crack_ of her left kneecap. 

She’s acutely aware that she’s out of breath. She crosses her arms over her chest, self-conscious. 

“What are you implying, exactly?” She sputters, trying to sound as accusatory as possible, cheeks a burning, splotchy red.

Merlin’s smile turns absolutely, _appallingly_ lecherous.

“ _I’m_ not implying anything,” he drawls, and takes a step towards her.

She presses herself further into the tree on instinct, as if she can somehow fall through the bark. A branch stabs the small of her back. She tries not to flinch. 

“Don’t—“ she starts, but he waves a hand at her. Her words dry up in her throat.

His face is suddenly, scarily innocent. A blank canvas. As if he’s shut down. He moves towards her again. She doesn’t even hear the shifting dirt below his feet, the solemn crunch of pine needles. It’s like he’s gliding on thin air.

“We all want what we can’t have,” he says carefully. His voice is deep and soft and rumbles sweetly from the back of his throat. She feels lulled and protected and— _cajoled_. He’s _magnetic._

“Still trying to impress me with your riddles?” The Midwife croaks, slow and sleepy, focused on the narrowing space between them. Their bodies meld together like it’s natural. She feels her skin crawl and bubble and shift, leak into his flesh and solidify. 

“Well, that depends,” Merlin starts, draws closer, looks at her askance, “Are you still trying to spy on me?”

“I—“

“You heard me,” he murmurs, but it sounds more like a hiss. Like he’s baring his teeth at her.

“No—that’s—that’s wrong,” she slurs, brows pinched together. She’s too quiet. She’s confused. Her words flake off of her tongue like shriveled, dead skin. 

“Tell me then, child,” Merlin murmurs, suddenly rapidly _uncharacteristically_ calm, “what is it that you see?” 

Her mouth opens, closes, then opens again. She does not understand—how he knew. How any of this has happened.

She swallows, and reluctantly flits her eyes over his form.

Merlin’s robes drape off his body strangely. His skin stretches like a suit of rubber over his bones. The divots of his skull are damp and cavernous.

“Well?”

The Midwife glances at him out of the corner of her eye. “You’re rotting.”

“How attentive.”

“Only evil things rot.” Her voice is watery. It does not feel like her own. The words drip from the spongy center of her tongue like a sour premonition.

Merlin grins wryly at her. It breaks his face in two like a tectonic plate, thin lips and sticky red tongue. He looks fragmented and jagged and terrifyingly _broken._

And she—she feels _distant,_ watches the arc of his hand as Merlin presses a finger to her temple, but he’s strangely cautious. His middle finger is long and bony. He taps once, twice, against the slope of her skull, and his hand is the same temperature as her skin. Maybe slightly warmer. And dry. She feels— _nothing._

She leans into his touch all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm gonna be honest, i will literally shit a brick (or something equally painful and rectangular) if anyone actually ships these two other than me
> 
> hope you enjoyed, i certainly did!


End file.
